Cyberdemon



The cyberdemon is a towering, hellish marriage of demon flesh and technology, with a gigantic muscular stature, a minotaur-like head with prominent black and gray horns, a gored humanoid torso filled with red wiring, a metallic prosthetic right leg, and a large rocket launcher mounted on its left arm. By far the most formidable enemy in classic Doom, and one of the most intimidating boss monsters in video game history, it is more than capable of taking out a healthy player in one hit from its arm-grafted weapon.

This monster first appears as a boss at the end of Doom level E2M8, and re-appears in the secret level E3M9. In the Ultimate Doom expansion, it makes additional appearances on E4M2, E4M6, and E4M7. The cyberdemon is featured on the retail box cover of Doom II, and it appears sparingly throughout the single-player game. It occurs on a large number of levels during multiplayer, however. The manual for the PC version of Doom II describes the monster as such: "A missile-launching skyscraper with goat legs. 'Nuff said."

- Doom II instruction manual

The original Doom instruction manual, on the other hand, does not mention or picture it at all, presumably to keep its climactic appearance in E2M8 a surprise. The Sony PlayStation and Super NES manuals for Doom, both published by Williams Entertainment, do however make mention of the cyberdemon: "Half unfeeling machine, half raging horned devil. This walking nightmare has a rocket launcher for an arm and will definitely reach out and touch you. Make sure you're loaded for bear before you get to this guy."

- Williams manuals

Combat characteristics
A cyberdemon will let out a loud animalistic, bovine-like roar when it spots a player - loud enough to be heard no matter how far away it is from the player. It attacks by firing barrages of three rockets. It has 4000 hit points and does not receive splash damage from explosions, making it fairly difficult to kill. It is also the fastest moving monster in the original game (the lost soul's charge attack not withstanding), and second fastest in Doom II (after the arch-vile). When destroyed, the cyberdemon's body will instantly dissolve into voluminous reddish clouds of flesh, blood and gore, leaving only his blood-soaked hooves; as he explodes, he lets out a short roar that is abruptly interrupted by the sound of his body exploding.

The cyberdemon's rockets are the same as the player's rockets; however as all projectiles shot by monsters, they do not damage other monsters of the same type. Furthermore, the cyberdemon and the spiderdemon take only direct hit damage, and are immune to all blast damage. Therefore, a greater number of rockets is required to kill these bosses than might be expected, and they must be direct hits. This immunity to blast damage also precludes players from attaining cheap damage/kills by either of the following methods: tricking the cyberdemon into firing rockets while it stands against an obstacle such as a wall or pillar, or running point blank up against the cyberdemon while invulnerable through the use of cheats or artifacts.

The cyberdemon is given a higher probability of performing his attack than other monsters, causing him to launch volleys of rockets at a high frequency. In common with other monsters, although the cyberdemon is shown with his rocket launcher in his left hand, the rockets emerge from his middle. While the cyberdemon does not have a melee attack in the PC and Doom 64 games, an apparently unintentional one does exist in the Super NES port: if the player is close enough to one in this version of the game, its attack consists of the rocket firing animation, but a scratching sound is heard with no rocket being fired.

General tactics
Killing a cyberdemon is almost impossible without using a large amount of ammunition. The BFG9000 is the most effective weapon against a cyberdemon, although the plasma gun can work fairly well. Three to four direct BFG hits will usually kill a cyberdemon, and at point-blank range two well-placed shots are enough. If a BFG9000 is not available, the rocket launcher is also effective - but be prepared for a long fight, since around 45 well-placed hits with the rocket launcher are required to kill a cyberdemon. Killing a cyberdemon with other weapons is significantly more difficult: for example it takes around 400 bullets from a chaingun. It is extremely difficult to kill a cyberdemon with melee attacks and it takes roughly 400 chainsaw or non-berserk fist hits to do so, but given their extreme powers and low pain chances, it is strongly not recommended under most circumstances. Almost certainly because of the difficulty involved, the Xbox Live Arcade release of Doom II features an Achievement that requires the player to kill a cyberdemon with their bare hands, named "You Have Huge Guts", after an infamous phrase from the Doom comic.

Because a cyberdemon has a low pain chance, it is difficult to prevent it from attacking. It is also important to be constantly aware of when it fires a rocket, as it will do so relentlessly. Circle-strafing can be used to avoid return fire while attacking. Because one rocket will often be enough to critically injure the player, it is imperative that all rockets are avoided. Because of splash damage, it is also important to stay away from the explosions. For example, it is advisable to avoid standing too close to a wall when fighting a cyberdemon, as splash damage can be sustained from rockets hitting the wall.

A skilled player can somewhat nullify the cyberdemon's low pain chance by straferunning towards it to get within point blank range, and then hitting it with the super shotgun. The monster will flinch roughly eighty percent of the time when hit by the full twenty-pellet blast, giving the player time to retreat, reload, and repeat the process. This can take the cyberdemon down in fewer than 25 shots, but is very risky, and only recommended in areas where the rocket launcher is impractical, or to conserve rocket and cell ammunition. This tactic is common amongst high tier speedrunners.

The cyberdemon's immense size can sometimes be used as an advantage when attacking it. In some maps, the cyberdemon(s) are placed in a large courtyard or structure and the entrance is too small for them to pass through. This can help a novice player to escape if major injuries are sustained.

Due to its firepower and hitpoints which are by far the highest among demons, the cyberdemon easily dominates in monster infighting battles. Because of this, luring it into fighting another monster is a great way to save ammunition. However, it can occasionally get overwhelmed by either the spiderdemon (as often occurs in MAP20: Gotcha!) or a large group of very strong demons like the baron of Hell (see MAP08: Tricks and Traps).

Data



 * 1) This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, and bullet dispersal are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
 * 2) Assumes that the target takes a direct hit from each shot.
 * 3) Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
 * 4) Hardcoded exception to infighting prevents all damage.

Appearance statistics
In the IWADs the cyberdemon is first encountered on these maps per skill level:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of cyberdemons per skill level:

Of the maps covered on the Doom Wiki, the following have the highest numbers of cyberdemons in single-player: This data was last verified on December 16, 2020.

Doom 64
The cyberdemon in Doom 64 has not gone through many changes except that it has darker colored skin, is much larger, and its rockets leave smoke trails. The cyberdemon is otherwise functionally the same as its classic counterpart except for the fact its rockets now emerge from the launcher itself instead of from the middle of the monster. Due to the Cyberdemon's massive height, this results in the rockets being fired in a downward angle towards the player when on levelled height, making splash damage a greater threat as the rockets can hit the ground and explode near the player, meaning the 64 cyberdemon does not need the aid of walls for its splash damage to be a factor. While the Doom 64 cyberdemon has a similar death sequence animation compared to its PC counterpart, consisting of a full-body explosion, it is more elaborate in Doom 64, involving its form stricken with several separate explosions before the body essentially evaporates in a haze of fiery blood, replete with a shot of its skeletal frame vanishing into the clouds.

Cyberdemons are relatively rare throughout the game, only appearing as the final obstacle in a couple late levels and in the secret "fun" maps that can only be accessed by the Features menu. Notably, unlike the original Doom 1 and 2, 64 is willing to throw multiple cyberdemons at the player at once, with featuring a dual cyberdemon battle at the end on the Watch Me Die difficulty, while  contains three cyberdemons on Watch Me Die, including having to fight the last two simultaneously also.

A special variety of cyberdemon appears on the game's introductory title sequence map. This particular cyberdemon is coded to only ever fire rockets toward the position of the cinematic moving camera and will not infight with other monsters, nor will it react to the player if the game is hacked to allow visiting MAP33. It can be killed, but since it has no death frames it will simply disappear.

While it went unused in the final game, one of the sculpted models for the 64 enemies featured a different variant of the cyberdemon, where both of its legs are replaced with cybernetic parts, has a metal plate over its stomach, and has rocket launchers on each of its hands. This different variant of the cyberdemon also appeared on the initial draft for Doom 64's cover art. If this was meant to be the 64 cyberdemon's original appearance or if it was meant to be an upgraded form of the cyberdemon to appear alongside the original is unknown.

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the cyberdemon was created by evil mastermind Kronos by combining human technology with demon flesh.

Doom II RPG
The cyberdemon appears again in Doom II RPG.

Wolfenstein RPG
The cyberdemon was originally known as the Harbinger of Doom. During World War II, he was summoned at Castle Wolfenstein by the Axis army. B.J. Blazkowicz was able to defeat it with the Spear of Destiny, destroying its right leg and left arm. The Harbinger of Doom vowed that it would have a rematch with Blazkowicz's descendent in the future. The rematch happened in Doom II RPG.

Trivia

 * In a  article, the cyberdemon was voted as #16 of the top 47 "The Most Diabolical Video-Game Villains of All Time".